statements “were used by the diplomats themselves as a happy means of testing popular opinion upon the various projects offered in council. How many ‘trial balloons’ were sent up in this fashion, nobody can recall. Nevertheless each delegation maintained clipping bureaus, which were brought up to date every morning and which gave the delegates accurate information as to the state of mind at home. Thus it came about that world opinion was ready and anxious to receive the finished work of the conference and that it was prompt to bring individual recalcitrant groups into line.”
Let me quote from the New York Evening Post of July, 1922, as to the important interaction of these forces: “The importance of the press in guiding public opinion and the coöperation between the members of the press and the men who express public opinion in action, which has grown up since the Peace Conference at Paris, were stressed by Lionel Curtis, who arrived on the Adriatic yesterday to attend the Institute of Politics, which opens on July 27 at Williamstown. ‘Perhaps for the first time in history,’ he said, ‘the men whose business it is to make public opinion were collected for some months under the same roof with the officials whose task in life is the actual conduct of foreign affairs. In the long run, foreign policy is determined by public opinion. It was impossible in Paris not to be impressed by the immense advantage of bringing into close contact the writers who, through the press, are making public opinion and the men who have to express their opinion in actual policy.’”
Harvard University, likewise, appreciating the power of public opinion over its own activities, has recently appointed a counsel on public relations to make its aims clear to the public.
The institutions which make public opinion conform to the demands of the public. The public responds to an equally large degree to these institutions. Such fights as that made by Collier’s Weekly for pure food control show this.